Thursday, August 28, 2014

ONE FAVORITE MOMENT EVENT & GIVEAWAY - K.A. TUCKER - TEN TINY BREATHS - YA CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE - SIMON & SCHUSTER - ATRIA BOOKS

Ok, I am here today to tell you about a favorite moment of mine from any book in this series. I have admittedly at this stage only read Ten Tiny Breaths and I loved it.

One favorite moment out of this book, I think would be probably my new found appreciation for the stripping profession. Now I know that is an odd moment. I do have many as I loved the book, but it was something that stood out for me. I have since read a lot of books e.g. Rock Chicks by Kristen Ashley and I do always remember what K.A. Tucker taught me in Ten Tiny Breaths.

Sure, you get dip sticks in every profession, but I liked Cain and the way he respected his staff. I liked the security lads, Nate and Ben, for the same reason. The girls are there to make a future for themselves, same as the guys. Hard times, call for certain measures. I loved Storm. I thought her character showed me a lot, she is a mamma and she needs to care for her chick. Life deals tougher hands, to some, more than others.

Obviously I have Trent moments, like the laundry scene , but I wanted to talk about this one, as Trent is a bit of an obvious moment. Who doesn't love a Trent moment?

Let's not forget Pervie Pete. Whenever he popped up, he was amusing, he grew on me.

I look forward to reading everybody's fave moment in the series.

I will show you my review I did back, when...

BOOK REVIEW by Michelle:

Breathe, I hear my mother’s voice say.

Ten tiny breaths.

It doesn’t help.

It never fucking helps, dammit!

I’m shaking all over as I sink further and further into the dark abyss where I go when people I care about die.

I can’t seem to get out of it.

I’m drowning under the weight of it.

This book , the more you read, the more it will get to you, affect you.

Make you think differently.

The chapter titles are like a step program.

Kacey , 20yrs old, fighter body, tough exterior, very broken, and her sweet sister 15yr old Livvie, escape their loser guardians, trying to make a life for themselves. Where Livvie is calm and sweet, Kacey is a ball breaker.

Their parents have died. Kacey has lost a lot.

Heard death claiming it's next victim.

Tanner is the resident landlord of the Melrose Place style 3 storey apartment complex in Miami, where the girls have found their temporary 6 month paid up front, safety nest. An assortment of character’s live there. Tanner and Pervie Pete being amongst them. Tanner will really grow on you, in an interesting way. Pervie Pete...not so much.

Enter Trent, all muscle and a bit of a mystery. He lives on one side of the girls.

Enter Storm, all Barbie and a whole lot of boobs and her 5 yr old daughter Mia, the sweet little princess has found a friend in Livvie. They live on the other side of the girls. Storm is a girl with heart. A girl that drew the short straw in life, but is making no excuses , she is looking after her daughter and working towards more in life.

You will LOVE Storm.

Kacey needs to find a gym, not your prissie gym, the hardcore, darkly lit, ratio of women 1:50 men, kind.

The fighter kind.

She is a kickboxer , a good one. The Breaking Point is where all the hardcore players work out. She is there to sweat, and work hard, release some of the demons she carries around with her.

She is there to fight her demons.

If that is possible.

The more you read, the more you see under the layers of Kacey. It is quite a ride for the reader.

I will forever think of a stripper, strip club, strip club owner, hired muscle, strip club bar tenders...differently. Not that I gave a lot of thought to this profession, but, K.A.Tucker will show you a group of characters who are loving, caring, understanding...a family of sorts. Everybody has a story of how they wound up working in the strip club.

Sometimes the journey in life takes a detour and you wind up working at a place like Penny’s Palace, with characters like, the owner Cain, the hired muscle Nate and Ben, and bartender Storm .

Some use it for the money, the stepping stone to a better life. They know why they are there. They have a planned out future that needs good cash to achieve it.

Penny’s Place comes with a group of people who look out for each other, genuinely care. Nate is a big teddy bear, Ben...well, he is a bit of a player, but deep down a nice guy, using the profession to make a life, a future.

Penny's Palace and its characters is the back drop to this story.

This is a story about characters that have been damaged, even broken, some almost beyond repair.

Almost.

You will meet Dr. Stayner. LOVE this guy. The words that spill from his lips, they brought back something that happened when I was in High School.

The night before last day, silly day, of High School before exam squatting... something terrible happened. Some of my fellow year 12 students went to a party, they drove later to Macdonalds.

They didn’t make it.

They had a tragic accident.

They had been drinking.

They were only 16-17yrs old.

One drove, one died, one got pretty banged up. They were only kids. They made a bad decision to get in a car, because they were hungry, because others at the party were hungry. They had all been drinking.

I have never forgotten that accident. Listening to Dr Stayner in this book...well, we will all get something out of this book. I got to look at the tragedy that happened in ’85 and I got some closure for the boy who was driving that I knew from High School, who lived and had to live with what happened, because he was the one who chose to drive. It wasn’t his car. The 3 guys were going to simply get MacDonalds for everyone.

They never made it.

I could tell where Ten Tiny Breaths was going, I was not sure how it was going to get there, but I could see where I was being taken. But then I got that BAM! moment where I got all girlie and did a sookie la la. The latter half of the book really opens up into this emotional, heart breaking story.

We are used to seeing Kacey with this tough exterior, the fighter chick for most of the book, she has done it all to keep her demons at bay, never exorcising the demons, just keeping them hidden under the surface.

Contained.

Not a healthy existence.

Then the guy from 1D enters her life.

This is a story that will squeeze your heart and wring it out for all the people affected by drink driving and the tragedy that comes from innocence.

Good people make bad decisions too.

Decisions that kill.

I am a squeaky person, never had a traffic infringement or broken the law. When you are a young kid, generally you have never broken the law, but you can make a bad choice in the moment, that will have consequences that could not be fathomed.

Consequences that can affect many.

Sometimes bad choices are successful, nobody gets hurt, killed. But is it worth it to roll that dice?

I am looking forward to book # 2 - One Tiny Lie - Livvie's story - April 2013.

I highly recommend this read. It has a message through it, well a few messages. It will be an eye opener to how you think . It will twist your heart.

It may even save a life.

TEN TINY BREATHS:

Just breathe, Kacey. Ten tiny breaths. Seize them. Feel them. Love them.

Four years ago Kacey Cleary’s life imploded when her car was hit by a drunk driver, killing her parents, boyfriend and best friend. Still haunted by memories of being trapped inside, holding her boyfriend’s lifeless hand and listening to her mother take her last breath, Kacey wants to leave her past behind. Armed with two bus tickets, twenty year old Kacey and her fifteen year old sister Livie escape Grand Rapids, Michigan to start over in Miami. Struggling to make ends meet, Kacey needs to figure out how to get by. But Kacey’s not worried. She can handle anything—anything but her mysterious neighbor in apartment 1D.

Trent Emerson has smoldering blue eyes, deep dimples, and perfectly skates that irresistible line between nice guy and bad boy. Hardened by her tragic past, Kacey is determined to keep everyone at a distance, but their mutual attraction is undeniable and Trent is determined to find a way into Kacey’s guarded heart—even if it means that an explosive secret could shatter both their worlds.

***Caution: Mature content! Not suitable for younger readers. Contains reference to drugs, swearing, and sexual content ***

Amazon | B&N | iBookstore | BAM | Bookish | Other

ONE TINY LIE:

Livie has always been the stable one of the two Cleary sisters, handling her parents' tragic death and Kacey's self-destructive phase with strength and maturity. But underneath that exterior is a little girl hanging onto the last words her father ever spoke to her. “Make me proud,” he had said. She promised she would...and she’s done her best over the past seven years with every choice, with every word, with every action.

Livie walks into Princeton with a solid plan, and she’s dead set on delivering on it: Rock her classes, set herself up for medical school, and meet a good, respectable guy that she’s going to someday marry. What isn’t part of her plan are Jell-O shots, a lovable, party animal roommate she can’t say ‘no’ to, and Ashton, the gorgeous captain of the men’s rowing team. Definitely him. He’s an arrogant ass who makes Livie’s usually non-existent temper flare and everything she doesn’t want in a guy. Worse, he’s best friends and roommates with Connor, who happens to fit Livie’s criteria perfectly. So why does she keep thinking about Ashton?

As Livie finds herself facing mediocre grades, career aspirations she no longer thinks she can handle, and feelings for Ashton that she shouldn’t have, she’s forced to let go of her last promise to her father and, with it, the only identity that she knows.

Amazon | B&N | iBookstore | BAM | Bookish | Other

FOUR SECONDS TO LOSE:

I believe you don’t have years, or months, or weeks to impact a person’s life. You have seconds. Seconds to win them over, and seconds to lose them.
Owning a strip club isn’t the fantasy most guys expect it to be. With long hours, a staff with enough issues to keep a psych ward in business, and the police regularly on his case, twenty-nine-year-old Cain is starting to second-guess his unspoken mission to save the women he employs. And then blond, brown-eyed Charlie Rourke walks through his door, and things get really complicated. Cain abides by a strict “no sleeping with his staff” rule. But being around Charlie challenges Cain’s self-control . . . and it’s been a long time since any woman has done that.

Twenty-two-year-old Charlie Rourke needs a lot of money, really fast, in order to vanish before it’s too late. Taking her clothes off for men makes her stomach curl, but Charlie tells herself that at least she’s putting her acting and dancing skills to good use. And though her fellow dancers seem eager to nab their sexy, sophisticated, and genuinely caring boss, she’s not interested. After all, Charlie Rourke doesn’t really exist—and the girl pretending to be her can’t get distracted by romance.

Unfortunately, Charlie soon discovers that developing feelings for Cain is inevitable, and that those feelings may not be unrequited—but losing him when he finds out what she’s involved with will be more painful than any other sentence awaiting her.

Amazon | B&N | iBookstore | BAM | Bookish | Other

FIVE WAYS TO FALL:

Sometimes you can’t change—and sometimes you just don’t want to. Discover Ben’s side of the story in this fourth novel by the beloved, top-selling indie author of Ten Tiny Breaths, One Tiny Lie, and Four Seconds to Lose.

Purple-haired, sharp-tongued Reese MacKay knows all about making the wrong choice; she’s made plenty of them in her twenty-odd-years. So when her impulsive, short-lived marriage ends in heartbreak, she decides it’s time for a change. She moves to Miami with the intention of hitting reset on her irresponsible life, and she does quite well…aside from an epically humiliating one-night stand in Cancun with a hot blond bouncer named Ben. Thank God she can get on a plane and leave that mistake behind her.

Football scholarship and frat parties with hot chicks? Part of charmer Ben Morris’s plan. Blown knee that kills any hope of a professional football career? So not part of the plan. Luckily Ben has brains to go with his knockout looks and magnetism. After three long years of balancing law school with his job as a bouncer at Penny’s Palace, he’s ready to lead a more mature life—until his first day of work, when he finds himself in the office of that crazy, hot chick he met in Cancun. The one he hasn’t stopped thinking about.

If Ben truly were a smart guy, he’d stay clear of Reese. She’s the boss’s stepdaughter and it’s been made very clear that office romances are grounds for dismissal. Plus, rumor has it she’s trouble. The only problem is, he likes trouble, especially when it’s so good-looking…

Amazon | B&N | iBookstore | BAM | Bookish | Other

IN HER WAKE: A Ten Tiny Breaths Novella:

Author’s Note: Although it is a prequel, In Her Wake is best read after completing Ten Tiny Breaths.

Before you knew him as Trent in Ten Tiny Breaths, he was Cole Reynolds—and he had it all. Until one night when he makes a fatal, wrong decision…and loses everything.

When a drunken night out at a Michigan State college party results in the death of six people, Cole must come to terms with his part in the tragedy. Normally, he’d be able to lean on his best friends—the ones who have been in his life since he could barely walk. Only, they’re gone. Worse, there’s the shattered body of a sixteen-year-old girl lying somewhere in a hospital bed, her entire life ripped from her because of a case of beer and a set of keys.

Everyone assures him that they know it wasn’t intentional, and yet he can’t ignore the weight of their gazes, the whispers behind his back. Nor can he shake the all-consuming guilt he feels every time he thinks of that girl who won’t so much as allow him near her hospital room to apologize. As the months go by and the shame and loneliness festers, Cole begins to lose his grip on what once was important—college, his girlfriend, his future. His life. It’s not until Cole hits rock-bottom that he can begin to see another way out of his personal hell: forgiveness.

And there’s only one person who can give that to him…

Amazon | B&N | iBookstore | BAM | Bookish | Other

About K.A. Tucker:

Born in small-town Ontario, Kathleen published her first book at the age of six with the help of her elementary school librarian and a box of crayons. She is a voracious reader and the farthest thing from a genre-snob, loving everything from High Fantasy to Chick Lit. Kathleen currently resides in a quaint small town outside of Toronto with her husband, two beautiful girls, and an exhausting brood of four-legged creatures.

Links: